The Power Of Yoga

SCENE

June 20, 2004|By Lisa Kingstone Lisa Kingstone is a West Hartford writer whose work has appeared in Connecticut Magazine, Hartford Magazine and Publisher's Weekly.

It is 5:40 on a Thursday night and students start streaming through the doors of West Hartford Yoga. They shuck off their shoes, turn off their cell phones, fill up their water bottles and roll out their mats. One woman bursts into the 95-degree room in nylons and a business suit and stakes out a spot for her mat before quickly changing in the small curtained space outside the large studio. A man walks in with jeans and rolls out his mat, returning moments later in black biker shorts. The age of the class ranges from Karolina Barwinski, a 22-year-old student, to Pat Werle, a grandmother of seven who describes her pre-yoga self as ``I couldn't even bend my head.''

Barbara Ruzansky, the director, reed thin, all arms and legs, walks in with the lightness of a dancer. She sparks with the kind of energy that has her leading a class called Midnight Madness from 10-12, and tonight's class, the most vigorous in the studio, Power Yoga II. She wears purple leggings and a black spaghetti strap top with her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She holds the remote to the music system, which she waves at the machine in the corner and starts a rhythmic soft jazz.

When Ruzansky approaches her mat in the front, people quiet down and then are silent. ``Lift your ribs out of your pelvis,'' she says and people straighten up their backs. A woman comes in a little late, looks around anxiously for a spot. Without missing a beat, Ruzansky calls her by name, points to where she can go. The woman looks relieved.

``Create a whisper sound in the back of the throat. Look inside to the area you want to focus on tonight, injury or old trauma, and send the breath into that area,'' she continues. The oceanic sound of ujayi breathing begins. Ujayi slightly closes the muscles of the throat to deepen and slow the breath, helping people to focus.

Ruzansky gets up effortlessly from her cross-legged position and moves behind Tomeck Barwinski, using her knees to coax his back out of a slump and release his shoulders and neck. Later he refers to Ruzansky's adjustments. ``She finds a moment when you can extend and she helps you do it. It's a big pleasure. It helps breathing and everything opens up.''

Jeff Lagasse, an Aetna employee, agrees: ``She has a mental inventory of every student.'' He remembers his first class with her. ``She put her index finger on an exact spot of my back and said, `You have a problem with your back right here.' I was done; she owned me.''

People have their eyes closed, their bodies still and are breathing with total focus as if under a spell. Ruzansky looks like a sprite moving around an enchanted forest. They move on to kapalabhati breathing, which forces breath out the nose in short bursts and sounds like husking corn. The energy level goes up a notch.

Next they roll onto their backs for abdominal attention where they work in unison. No eyes dart around; no hands fiddle with clothing. After several rounds, some students groan. When they are done, some collapse in big sighs. ``When you're done, don't disappear. You've just created a lot of heat, a lot of fire, stay with that,'' she says. She then instructs them to do more core work with legs spread apart, moving their tailbones off the floor. Some legs begin shaking. Sweat starts dripping off foreheads. She tells them to bring the legs in. ``Aahh,'' she says, expressing their relief when they hug knees into chest. She has changed the music again with a wave of the remote to a Mediterranean melody. Her words mixing with the breath of 29 people feels like the backup percussion.

They begin sun salutation, a series of linked flowing postures. All know the sequence. Some can float their legs back from a forward bend into a pushup position; others struggle and land heavily.

Rick Lawis talks about the challenge of the class. ``A lot of times I think I want to do an easier class, but I never do because I want Barbara.'' He began classes with her years ago, before she opened her studio. ``It's just good stuff, mentally, physically and emotionally,'' he says.

Ruzansky knows about the power of yoga to heal because, as she puts it, ``Yoga saved my life.'' Ruzansky battled eating disorders for decades. At one point in her 20s, she weighed 85 pounds. During Ruzansky's illness, she was trying to find a cure, reading in medical libraries and even publishing an article about it in The New York Times Magazine under a pen name. But all the reading, writing, psychiatrists and psychotropics couldn't change her focus, which was an external one. She could only see her body from the outside. Her relationship was a hostile one, based on scales, mirrors and calorie counting.